Book Review, Winning and McDermott, He Texted: The Ultimate Guide to Decoding Guys

April 17, 2014

Lisa Winning and Carrie Henderson McDermott’s He Texted (published on April 15th of this year) is based off of their popular advice website, which aims to decode the often arcane ways in which texting has changed the dating world. Dating was hard enough in the days of actual telephone calls, so what on earth is a girl to do with the text message? The book takes some of the more popular entries from their website, where users sent in texts and asked for assistance in decoding them, and lays out the website’s signature brand of advice from the “HeTexted Bros,” Winning and McDermott’s crew of advice-giving men from various walks of life.

In a lot of ways, I found the book more interesting as a sociological slice of life and dating as it is currently experienced by twenty-somethings, especially as my last foray into the dating world took place during the pre-smartphone era. Things have certainly gotten more complicated, and the text message seems to be inspiring new forms of bad dating etiquette and rude behavior. While I loved the book’s tone, the down-to-earth advice, and the HeTexted Bros, I have to say that for the most part, I’m saddened by the lengths people now have to go to in order to get a straight answer or even some honesty from the people they’re dating. While I know that the website is basically the “annals of bad texting behavior,” it seems like there are a whole lot of people out there making themselves into nervous wrecks in the name of finding a relationship. If ever a case was made to ditch the smartphone, this would probably be it.

This, however, is more my reaction to the phenomenon that He Texted aims to decipher, rather than to the book itself. Winning, McDermott, and their group of advice-giving bros are a fun group to spend some time with, and the book is a useful guide to dating as we now know it, as well as to the ways in which we need to exercise a lot more common sense when it comes to finding love.

Header Info

The image is adapted from the 1895 edition of Webster's Academic Dictionary, found in the entry for "phrenology" (p. 422). See image at
Wikimedia Commons. The full text of the original can be found at Google Books.